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TWENTY
Decima
I didn’t knowhow we’d gone from a luxury home built into the side of a rocky hill to a garage in an abandoned house, but here we were, squatting in the dingy space like a group of drug addicts waiting for our next fix. Our efforts at undermining the Blood Hunter hadn’t given us the freedom to settle into proper accommodations yet. I wished I had some idea of what it would take.
But we had another mission ahead of us that might get us closer to the goal of taking him down for good. Blaze was working out the final details on his computer, and the other men were clustered around him in the far corner near the door to the rest of the house, going through our equipment. I’d brought a sandwich and a bottle of water over to Carter, who I’d set up on a blanket we’d scrounged up.
One of the reasons we’d picked this garage was that it appeared that some previous inhabitants had used it for band practice. The walls were heavily soundproofed. I couldn’t hear a thing from outside, which meant that even if my brother decided to holler, no one out there would hear him. We still had his ankles bound together and one of his wrists now handcuffed to a heavy steel bar that protruded from the concrete wall. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Which was a good thing, because this mission required all hands on deck. We were going to leave him here on his own for a few hours, because I didn’t trust him alone in the van out where we were going. There was too much chance of him drawing attention one way or another, or of someone noticing him in the vehicle and getting concerned if we drugged him.
If only we could have trusted him to be on our side in this, to fight with us instead of against us… but I knew that was unlikely. All the same, I sat down across from him while he dug into the sandwich.
He ate in silence for a few minutes. Then he glanced toward the men. “Are you guys going somewhere?”
I inclined my head. “We’ve got another job to do.”
“Looking for more Maliks to kill?”
The snark in his tone didn’t quite land. He mostly sounded tired, like he thought he should be a brat about it but couldn’t put his heart into it. I studied him carefully.
“It’s a job that we’re hoping will get us closer to destroying the Blood Hunter,” I said. “The man who’sreallyresponsible for most of those deaths.”
“You’re responsible,” he retorted. “The person who wields the weapon is the one who made the final choice.”
I gazed back at him. “By that logic, you and the rest of our family are the only ones responsible for the deaths of all those innocent kids. In which case all I did was eliminate a bunch of child murderers from the world.”
“That’s not what they were,” he protested, but that response sounded weak too. He was getting fed up with this debate, and maybe a little worn down, realizing how hard it was for him to justify what our parents and the rest of the family had done. Ihopedhe was realizing it. I didn’t know how I could be kinder to him without putting the rest of us more at risk.
“I know they were more than that to you,” I said quietly. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have your family torn away from you, no matter what else they were doing or how cruel they could be. I’m sorry for how you’re hurting. I didn’tdoit to hurt you. It was the only way I could save myself and the people I care about. And it’s what the Blood Hunter intended to happen all along. He set everything up so that I’d be in that position.”
“I don’t know why you’re bothering harping on about that.”
I folded my arms in front of me. “I’m reminding you about it because if you’re really interested in stopping bad people, you’ve got the perfect opportunity if you cooperate with us. I’d be happy to give you a part in what we’re doing to crack down on the Blood Hunter’s crimes. If we succeed, we’ll take down the man responsible for your family’s deaths. Hell, I’d say you have the right to be involved in getting justice. I just have to be sure you’re on our side.”
Carter glowered at me. “Why do you care anyway? You might as well just kill me like the others.”
My heart sank. I hadn’t thought it was all going to be okay just like that, but I obviously wasn’t making any more headway right now.
I stood up. “It’s not about caring, Carter. It’s about doing what’s right. There’s a part of you, even if it’s still small, that knows what you all did to those kids isn’t okay. That realizes you bought into a delusion that was about power rather than justice. As long as that part is there, you deserve the chance to shake off the sick ideas the rest of the family indoctrinated you with. I know you’re not a monster. I just hope you get to the point where you can admit I’m not one either.”
I checked him over quickly to make sure he was both as comfortable and secure as we could make him. “There’s no point in yelling after we leave. The building is soundproofed. You might as well save your throat. I’m not going to gag you if I don’t have to.”
“How nice of you,” Carter muttered. He slumped back against the wall, clutching his bottle of water. I walked over to the men.
“Are we ready to get going?” I asked. “Because I’d really like to shoot some perverted assholes now.”
The corner of Julius’s mouth twitched upward. “I think that can be arranged.”
* * *
“This should be a good time,” Garrison muttered with obvious sarcasm as we stared down the mansion that was our target from a partly sheltered perch along the top of the stone wall that surrounded the sprawling property. The house was pretty sprawling too, a three-story neoclassical monstrosity that could have swallowed the building I’d grown up in whole, as big as the household had been.
The place belonged to one of the Blood Hunter’s biggest clients in the human trafficking business. We’d determined with the data we’d gathered during our previous missions that Mr. Gordell had bought more than a dozen girls over the years, most of them underage or not much over eighteen. Lord only knew what he’d done with them since then.
Armed guards stood at the main gate into the property, but we’d circumnavigated them completely. If this went well, they’d never know we’d been here until after we’d already left—with the women their employer had purchased.
“No one posted at the back door,” Talon observed.
